A Journey into Night

Strangers on a bus ride

There were plenty of free
seats on the top deck but he did not choose to move.

The night’s chill had
insinuated itself beneath his winter jacket and he huddled, hunched up against
the window, head bowed, hands tucked into armpits, desperately attempting to
coax blood back into his fingers. His toes scraped back and forth against the insoles
of his shoes in a quest to encourage life into his extremities.

If it weren’t for the reflecting light on his wet hair he’d
have appeared as a dark shadow in the deep shadow of the broken light above. He
wore black as a uniform: differing shades attesting to each article’s longevity.

Add to this visual mix his black hair and heavy stubble and
it was no surprise that the gaze of the girl in the faux-fur coat missed him during
her visual sweep of available seating.

He glanced up.

The pallor of his countenance sent a shock through her
system, eliciting an instinctive yelp of anxious surprise as she noticed him:
her lipstick formed a well-practiced “Oh!” she unconsciously took one step back
towards the stairwell.

Stay or go he didn’t care. His attention had already
drifted: her attractive face already forgotten in a pleasurable tingling that signalled
the return of his circulation.

His eyes drifted to the passenger’s refuge, a window onto
darkness.

In that reflective surface, the emergence of a stocking clad
leg from beneath a faux-fur coat signalled the beginning of a different kind of
tingle…